mfg

Well, if nothing else Brian, you can see Avanti folks are interested in finding your parents car!!

Avantis have an excellent survival rate, as they were ‘special’ from day one….. Would you mind listing the specifics of your parents Avanti.. as best as you can remember? (color in & out, engine type, etc)

The car indeed does survive and under full restoration (less engine) And yes, it sure would be nice to see this Avanti, and it’s unique engine, reunited!

Sometimes the inner dust shield somehow gets slightly bent and will occasionally scrape at the spinning disc on turns.

The engine is owned by a fellow named Greg Cone, who had the foresight to purchase all the unique R5 engine parts from the Granatellis years ago when they were eliminating their Studebaker inventory….. The block Mr. Cone is using may or may not be the block used at Bonneville (not sure).. and apparently the pistons originally used in the R5 engine at Bonneville now reside in a different (R3) type Stude Avanti engine.

Off topic……...Hi Zedman! … if you happen to know Brian Grenall from Victoria, please tell him ‘mfg’….(Ed) said hello…. Thanks!

Very interesting Dwight!….And thank you for your service to this country!

Geoff… you probably needed to prime 63R1025 after it had been sitting for several days?

Nelson…. I was wondering if the R3, in everyday use, was basically as ‘easy to live with’ as an R2 powered Avanti would have been?…. Good cold start?….. Reasonably smooth idle?….drivability in heavy traffic? The 425/409 or the 426 Hemi were not known for having the best road manners… Was the Avanti R3 more ‘civilized’?…Ed

I’ll defer to the folks who have actually driven R3 Avantis through different weather and temperature conditions!!

There are openings for water drainage on both sides of your Avanti, at bottom of car.. ….pretty much directly in line with the inside vents… Poking with a screwdriver usually opens them, however, if bodywork was done in that area in the past it isn’t unusual for those drain holes to be plugged up or even sealed off.

I hear you… on some ‘modern’ cars the front bumper cover has to be removed to change a headlight bulb!…… However, there’s more to it than just an access problem…. If ( back in the day) an R3 Avanti was actually used for everyday transportation, imagine what a mess that filter assy would be after zipping along slush covered streets… or even after driving through a torrential rain!…. Not to mention that the last thing a Studebaker Avanti needs is a sizable object, like that air cleaner housing, blocking air flow to the radiator….. A proper air cleaner assy on the R3 Avantis, had production continued, would have required a complete rework of the passenger side front fender inner skirt panel.…. Of course, in the latter months of 1963 a better air cleaner location on R3 (and even R2) Avantis was about the last thing Studebaker Corporation was thinking about!…. Ed

That R3 air cleaner location… I realize there probably wasn’t other practical options.. but what a terrible place to locate that filter!!

Yep… you’ve got it right… the open end on overflow tank is just an outlet to ground if the tank itself should fill to capacity… which should never happen if you pay attention to the coolant ‘fill’ indicator line on the plastic tank.

Back in the day the stainless steel grille would need to be removed to service the air filters?